Veterans Memorial Middle School Community in Brick Mourns Counselor

The staff and students at Veterans Memorial Middle School in Brick were in mourning on Friday after a school counselor was found dead in her home on Thursday.

“I have some sad news,” Brick Township Schools Superintendent Walter Uszenski said at Thursday’s Board of Education meeting as he announced the death of Melissa Mattia, who was a youth services counselor at the school. ”The district sends its condolences to her family.”

Uszenski said Mattia, who apparently was popular the students, was 30 years old. Crisis counselors were brought into the school on Friday, and students and others posted notes saying how they will miss her on the website of the O’Brien Funeral Home, which is handling her services.

“She helped me through day by day bullying,” one poster wrote. Another wrote that the training she and her husband provided through their fitness company had prepared her son for basic training in the U.S. Marine Corps.

The visitation for Mattia is Monday from 4 to 8 p.m. at the O’Brien Funeral Home, 505 Burnt Tavern Rd. in Brick, .followed by a Mass of Christian Burial on Tuesday, October 28, 2014 at 10:30 a.m .at St. Catharine’s RC Church, 215 Essex Ave.in Spring Lake.